


Eight Days a Week I thru VIII

by JiM



Category: The X-Files
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1999-09-30
Updated: 1999-09-30
Packaged: 2018-11-20 07:04:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11330886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JiM/pseuds/JiM
Summary: Note from alice ttlg, the archivist: this story was originally archived atThe Basement, which moved to the AO3 to ensure the stories are always available and so that authors may have complete control of their own works. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in June 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address onThe Basement's collection profile.





	Eight Days a Week I thru VIII

**Author's Note:**

> Note from alice ttlg, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [The Basement](http://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Basement), which moved to the AO3 to ensure the stories are always available and so that authors may have complete control of their own works. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in June 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [The Basement's collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/thebasement/profile).

 

8 Days a Week by JiM

"I Don't Like Mondays"   
by JiM,   
for Kass, who was having a Monday

* * *

Mondays. It wasn't so much that he hated Mondays with the standard mindless sullenness of the working stiff. It was more that Monday always seemed like the beginning of a long gray stretch of paperwork and polished conference tables. Of course, that was barely a contrast to the plain vanilla beige of his weekends, most often filled with the paperwork generated by those long iron gray meetings. And nothing else. No one else. Some weekends he had gone for two days straight without hearing the sound of his own voice.

But last weekend, it had all changed. Which made this Monday something entirely new and different. He wasn't particularly comfortable with "new and different". In fact, he wasn't very comfortable about anything having to do with this past weekend. He shifted in his chair again and tried hard not to fidget or wince when his lower back and ribs reminded him that he hadn't had a work out like that in a long time. He couldn't help the idiot grin that stole onto his face. It was ludicrous, a man his age risking the little he had left of his career and self-respect just to feel like hell on a Monday morning.

But Hell was warm, so damned warm...

The starched collar of his shirt was rubbing against a bite-bruise and he fingered it surreptitiously, trying to look fascinated at the ongoing discussion of the Director's new personnel policy as it related to same-sex bathroom facilities. Damn the man. It was bad enough that he'd stormed his way into Skinner's apartment, battered down all his defenses and then curled up in Skinner's bed as if he had always belonged there. Did he have to stake his claim, boast of his victory by marking him publicly, too?

Looking around the room, Skinner was mildly pleased to find that several of his colleagues looked as bad as he felt. Misery loves company, he thought snidely. Mulder in particular, was looking like the assault on Everest. There were dark shadows under his eyes, he was pale and he looked like he'd shaved with someone else's razor in the dark. His shirt hung off him and his tie was uncharacteristically understated. Mulder was staring glassily at the Human Resources geek who was droning on about sexual politics and the implications of micturation on office productivity. Skinner wondered if Mulder was thinking about introducing the HR guy to the sea monster he and Scully had come back from Florida muttering about.

Skinner sighed and shifted again, wincing openly this time. When he looked again, Mulder was staring straight at him. The glassy disconnected look was gone. His gaze was direct and searing. /I want you now/

Oh yeah, Hell was warming up again.

But Skinner was an old hand at not allowing any emotions to show on his face, no matter how sharply or how deeply they cut through him. He blinked once, slowly, ino Mulder's hot gaze, then rested his chin on the thumb of his right hand and looked back toward the front of the room.

Now Mulder was the one to shift and fidget, lips pressed together, the fingers of one hand drumming a pencil on the tabletop. Skinner almost allowed himself a smile. It was good to know that he didn't burn alone.

Burning. God - that long, slow slide into heat and madness, feeling Mulder sliding into him... No one could do that to him, no one ever would again except for this man. He didn't realize that he was staring at Mulder until the man's pencil slipped and clattered to the table top. Skinner suddenly knew it was written on his face for Mulder to see. /You have me. Yours. Only you./

Mulder was staring back at him, eyes so hot and bright that Skinner wondered that no one else noticed them. But they might have been alone in that gray Monday morning room, full of gray Monday morning people.

A long, slow smile was curling onto Mulder's lips. He saw. He saw it all. Skinner knew suddenly that Hell was not someplace hot and shadowed -- it was gray industrial carpetting, polished oak tabletops, pitiless chairs and unforgiving flourescent lights. And it was Mulder sitting across the table, knowing that Skinner was his.

Hell was a numb-gray Monday morning and it stretched five days until his world would burst out into fire and color again.

*Now* Walter Skinner hated Mondays.

Finis

Feedback alway appreciated at: 

 

* * *

 

"Friday On My Mind", a sequel to "I Don't Like Mondays"  
by JiM

* * *

Walter Skinner had been in Hell all week and frankly, he was getting tired of it. Last Firday, Mulder had appeared on his doorstep, bulled his way in and proceeded to turn his entire world upside down with one kiss. He had spent the weekend further upsetting the natural order of Skinner's universe until early Monday morning, when he had left Skinner's apartment like a whirlwind, taking his best dress shirt, an unimpeachable tie and whatever remained of his equanimity. There was a yawning emptiness in Mulder's absence that hadn't been there before. No, that was wrong. It had always been there, but the edges hadn't seemed so sharp, nor the silence so deep.

The staff meeting on Monday morning had not helped the situation. During the meeting, dull to the point of foaming madness, Mulder had sat across the room and simply looked at him. In that moment, Walter Skinner had realized how far gone he truly was. After years of struggling, fighting, resisting, infuriating, supporting, guiding, protecting and admiring Mulder, he had fallen the last yard; now he loved the man. 

It is not a comfortable thing for a sober man of nearly fifty to realize that he has lost his heart to a younger man. It is less comforting still for that sober man to realize that he has given his heart away to a man so unstable that he makes outpatients and conspiracy theorists think twice before arguing with him. Worst of all, when all he knows is that the one he loves wants him, wants him with a burning intensity that defies all rational discussion but cannot and should not be mistaken for love without very clear elucidation, well, that sober man is in dire need of simple reassurance. Reassurance and a few physical tokens; all he has is a fading hickey and a week-old stale-scented dress shirt that he is embarassed to say he slept with last night.

And why is he not sleeping with his beloved, his obsession, the disturber of his peace of mind? Because the sonofabitch was called out of that interminable staff meeting and left for a case in Iowa within 45 minutes. And hasn't been heard of since, except for two case-related faxes and a cryptic e-mail that was blank except for the subject line "I've got Friday on my mind".

And it is Thursday; a gray, cold, sodden Thursday afternoon, the kind that lasts at least three weeks. There is no hope, he thinks, and bends to write his comments in the margins of yet another case file.

Still, he is annoyed when his intercom buzzes at 5:15. He has gotten used to the steady, miserable, plodding rhythm and is taking some parched comfort in the steadily growing pile in his out-basket. He is unjustifiably irritated at the interruption in his misery; he doesn't want to be intrigued or concerned or even mildly interested in anything anyone has to say to him -- look at what happened the last time someone did that to him.

No one responds to his curt growl into the intercom. His assistant has probably hit the button by accident. He scowls and bends to his work again. The door opens with a quiet *snick* and the world stops when he looks up.

Mulder closes the door behind him and leans against it for a moment. There is rain still streaming from his hair and his overcoat and his skin seems very pale in the gloom of an office lit only by one desklight and a middle-aged lover's fear. Skinner opens his mouth to say something, he doesn't know what, but is stopped when Mulder holds a finger to his own lips to silence him. He stays where he is for another long moment, the silence becoming both thicker and more brittle with every passing second. Then he is across the room and Skinner is standing and he doesn't know when he got up. Then Mulder is in his arms and kissing him and the madness is back in force. 

Mulder's lips are cool and wet against his; his sodden clothing is soaking into Skinner's starched officewear and it feels so good, like rain in the desert. He doesn't want to stop, he can't stop...but Mulder is pulling away from him, pushing firmly at Skinner's shoulders. He lets him go with a kind of dumb confusion that is budding into misery just as Mulder holds up seven fingers, then points at Skinner, smiles and leaves as silently as he came.

7 o'clock, Skinner's place.

Now Skinner knows something new - Hell is not some place warm, nor is it a long gray week. Hell is wet and cool and silent and slick and it's waiting for him at home. And it's only Thursday.

<Finis>

Feedback cheerfully accepted at: 

 

* * *

 

"Wednesday Morning, 3 AM"  
(sequel to "I Don't Like Mondays" and "Friday on My Mind")  
by JiM

* * *

Finally, Walter Skinner knows what Hell is. In the past week and a half, he'd thought he'd finally gotten a handle on it, stared it in the face. Now, lying here, Mulder sleeping on his chest, Walter Skinner knows what Hell is. And he knows that it's his for keeps.

Mulder had shifted drowsily and Skinner had stroked his back, soothing him into more restful sleep. It was somewhere around 3 am that his fingers slipped into the shallow indentation on Mulder's left shoulder, an old bullet wound, well-healed. And that's when he knew.

Hell is knowing your lover's wounds but not knowing where they came from. Knowing that he will be hurt again. And again. There is nothing anyone can do about it. Certainly nothing Skinner can do; half his life is gone and all he can offer is a mortgaged soul and a love so terrible that he can taste it, bittersweet and so real. It is the taste of Mulder's semen in his mouth, the rain that rolled down his temple, the sweat in his hair, the sips of beer he kept stealing when Skinner's attention was momentarily on the game.

It is Mulder's fault. For a single instant, Skinner feels his soul twist and knows that he could hate Mulder for bringing him to this. He remembers a headstone he saw once, in a cold cemetery somewhere he didn't want to be. He had bruised his shin tripping over a tilted slab, and when he stooped to check the damage, the carved words had bruised him more deeply than the wind-sheared granite ever could.

/It is a fearful thing to love What Death can touch/

The room is full of 3 am shadows and even the light that filters in the half-open curtains is too dim to help him now. All it does is show that he doesn't understand the true depth of anything. It was supposed to be about sex and power and rebellion and friendly fucking. Not this.

Mulder stirs again, rubbing his roughened cheek on Skinner's chest, before turning his head a little and nuzzling at the tingling skin with soothing lips. It's too late, Skinner realizes. Too late to worry about what it was supposed to be about, as his hand curves around the vulnerable nape of Mulder's neck, his thumb resting over the artery. It's about this now, about feeling the steady beat of Mulder's life beneath Skinner's hand and feeling the tearing joy, the bitter elation as Mulder's tongue laps at his skin. It is this moment's animal bliss and stark terror that will mark him forever. They will be his passport in Hell, the stamp on his soul that proves him human.

Mulder seems intent on branding that mark on his flesh; he is sucking and nibbling sleepily on Skinner's chest now. One thumb is lazily circling the nipple next to his mouth, brushing it again and again until Skinner is trembling from the effort of not writhing beneath him.

Mulder looks up at him suddenly and Skinner is struck by the fact that Mulder's eyes are unshadowed, even at this dogwatching hour. He can hear what Mulder said hours ago, can see it echoing in those clear, light eyes.

/You think too much/

He had been silent, knowing it was true.

He is silent now.

Walter Skinner now knows what Hell is. Even as his lover begins to whisper soft words among the gentle kisses he gives, Walter Skinner is in Hell. And he rejoices helplessly in his knowledge, even as he rejoices in his lover. Because he can't have one without the other.

Hell is loving someone who loves you and knowing that he will die someday.

Walter Skinner smiles, and traces his lover's mouth with his finger. Welcome to Hell, Walter.

<finis>

Feedback always appreciated at: 

 

* * *

 

Note: Ok I admit it, it's a series. This is part 4 in the "Eight Days a  
Week" series.  
#1 - "I Don't Like Mondays"  
#2 - "Friday on My Mind"  
#3 - "Wednesday Morning, 3 AM"  
#4 - "Tuesday's Dead"

Because *I* had a bad day at work....

* * *

"Tuesday's Dead"  
by JiM

The raspy scent of pine cleaner in the air grates in every breath and he wonders how many more he can take before he howls in animal misery. The halls are lit with the same pitiless fluorescent as the conference rooms and offices where it all began. It is fitting, he thinks, as the doors swing open before him, that it should end this way; their few weeks together have made a noose of time, bright and harsh at beginning and end, with the gentle twilight in between.

The drawer slides open slowly and someone flips back the sheet and he stares and does not blink. Someone is talking, asking him something, and he wants to bat away at the irritation. Those are Mulder´s clothes; the suit that he bought solely because his father would have hated it. The shirt is his own; Mulder had never given it back after their first weekend. The material is cold and dirty between his fingers.

The face... the face is not Mulder´s. The melted features might once have been human, but they have none of the wild originality of Mulder´s face. The face is now one regular glob of seethed flesh and he knows that soon there will be nothing to stop the howling thing in his chest from tearing free. He touches his fingers to the side of the head, where the melting did not touch. The cold of Hell seeps into his hand and begins to run up his arm ... then he does shout. 

No, he roars. White-coated techs and dark-suited agents scurry before him as he begins his rampage. The thing on the table wears Mulder´s clothes but is not Mulder; the curve of the ear is wrong. The agent who made the preliminary identification is reduced to shreds and is universally condemned by his peers to making the call to Mulder´s partner and explaining his error.

Now Skinner knows the tyranny of hope and briefly regrets the peaceful despair he has left behind. It is the difference between struggling to hold on to the last thread over a chasm and the serenity of failure and the endless fall. 

In three hours, he is striding through other corridors, harsh with their own scents of pine trees and death and lights which forgive no human frailties in this repository of human weakness. Scully is just leaving the room; her face burns with fierce joy and he feels himself begin to thaw in its warmth. He wants to thank her for her tact, for giving him these few moments to himself but can find no words, so he walks past her with a nod.

Mulder is like a dark smudge in the paleness of the room. His eyes are dark and large in a bruised face but they burn, too, and Skinner is across the room and gathering Mulder to him before either can speak. Mulder is warm and angular and too thin in his arms and no amount of pine cleaner can mask his forest scent. Skinner breathes it in and feels the howling thing subside in him. He begins to whisper softly as his hands move over Mulder´s hair and face; he knows what he is saying, even though he can´t hear the words himself. He doesn´t need to; he knows the foolish, soft murmurs are nothing more than the sounds of his passage back to Hell.

Mulder is clinging to him, slowly warming him again. He wants nothing more than to remain here, sitting half-on this bed in this pale, pine-scented room, his maddening lover safe in his arms for just these few moments. But it is not to be. Scully strides back in and the naked shock on her face tells him that the roller-coaster of life with Mulder has looped again.

There is nothing to be done; he gathers Mulder a little closer to him and starts to laugh.

(Feedback to )

 

* * *

 

Note: Ok I admit it, it's a series. This is part 4 in the "Eight Days a Week" series.  
#1 - "I Don't Like Mondays"  
#2 - "Friday on My Mind"  
#3 - "Wednesday Morning, 3 AM"  
#4 - "Tuesday's Dead"  
# 5 - "Saturday Night's All Right for Fighting"

Date: 3/99  
Archiving: X/, slash x, all others, please ask.  
Web page: http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Metro/4859/JiM.html (thanks, Mona!)  
These tales will be there shortly....

* * *

"Saturday Night's All Right for Fighting",  
sequel to "Tuesday's Dead",  
#5 in the "8 Days a Week; Skinner in Hell" series  
by JiM

Walter Skinner has learned something new again. He has learned that Hell is chilly and very quiet and starts on the weekend.

The bottle clinks against the lip of the glass and the sound is too loud in his empty apartment. That, and the sound of his own breathing, have been all that he has heard since he left work yesterday. So the echoes of his own words are still clawing at him from inside his head.

/Mulder. I can't do this any more./

He presses his thumbs into the unyielding ridge of bone above his eyes. So much he can't do any more. He can't stand the silences in his life. He can't forget how it feels to have someone hold him all night long. He can't send Mulder out and watch him come back a little more bloodied every time. He can't wait for the day when all the warmth will spill out of his life, the day Mulder won't come back at all.

So he ended it.

He hadn't meant to. It had been a simple case meeting, a final wrap up on the face-melting crowd who had kidnapped Mulder weeks ago; that day he had begun with a faceless body on a cold slab. Skinner knew he was acting strangely. He was more remote than Scully and Mulder were used to, his questions curt, abrupt. He had been unable to tear his eyes away from the two splinted fingers on Mulder's left hand, another minor wound bandaged in passing as Mulder roared after the truth.

Even as Skinner signed the report and dismissed the two agents, he had begun to shiver. And when Mulder turned back at the door to ask if he were all right, eyes warm and gentle, the avalanche had come. Mulder was reckless, obsessed, suicidal, paranoid, unstable. Skinner had never raised his voice as he buried them both in cold words, harsh-edged truths that neither could deny.

The worst had been that Mulder, so good with words, had never spoken at all.

Now, sitting and shivering in his cold apartment, listening to the winter rains just outside, Skinner knows that Mulder's silence had spoken for him. He wonders vaguely, as he takes another swallow, why he is not able to cry.

Darkness has fallen when the door to his apartment opens and closes. Mulder comes into the room and Skinner bites his lip; he'd forgotten the key he'd given him weeks ago. When he will not look up, Mulder comes to stand before him. Skinner still won't look up. Mulder shoves the bottle and glass out of the way and sits on the coffee table in front of him. Their knees touch and Skinner shivers again.

Finally, he has to look up. Mulder meets his gaze and his eyes are dark and full and Skinner is appalled to think that he has taken the light from them. He still doesn't speak and Skinner suddenly knows why. Weeks ago, lying in bed, wordlessly wrapped around one another, he had met Mulder's teasing remark about his taciturnity with a small bit of his own truth.

/Words are easy for you. Truth can be found in the silences, too./

So Mulder sits on his coffee table and looks at him and doesn't speak. After a time, he reaches up and begins unbuttoning his own shirt. He pulls it open, then reaches for Skinner's hand. Still holding his gaze, Mulder presses Skinner's fingers to the shallow scar in his left shoulder. The scar left from where Scully shot Mulder to save him. Skinner remembers the evening he finally coaxed the story from Mulder; he remembers holding him tightly for hours afterward, without words. Mulder's fingers dig into his wrist as he holds Skinner's hand in place.

Then Mulder reaches out with his other hand and slides it under Skinner's tee shirt, fingers coming to rest on the ridges of scars on his abdomen, wounds from a war that killed him, yet left him behind. His fingers are so warm. Skinner's mouth opens to say something, anything, to rob Mulder of this moment. Mulder presses his fingers more firmly into Skinner's abdomen; his hand tightens on Skinner's wrist. His eyes burn and Skinner is silenced.

The truth is that they both have scars. The truth is that they have both been dead and will be again and some day it will be true forever. The truth is that the cold is no longer numb, that it hurts more than it ever did before Mulder and he can't live with it again. The truth of Mulder's warm hands on him hits harder than a gut punch and he folds slowly over Mulder's hand until he is doubled up and gasping, forehead resting on Mulder's knee.

Mulder's hand is gentle on the back of his neck, rubbing slowly. The other arm circles his shoulders, pulling him closer. Mulder is whispering now, the soft words soothing him as they fill up the silence that Skinner's terrified words had blasted out the day before.

Skinner's left arm slips around Mulder's waist; his other hand slides up to the back of his own neck and his fingers mesh with Mulder's. It is too soon to smile, but he feels it begin again, somewhere deep inside him.

Walter Skinner has learned something new again. Hell is cold and silent and he will never go there again. He can't.

<finis>

Feedback always cheerfully appreciated at 

 

* * *

 

"Sunday Driver" (#6 in the 8 Days a Week; Skinner in Hell" series), sequel to  
"Saturday Night's All Right for Fighting"  
by JiM

Note: Ok I admit it, it's a series. This is part 6 in the "Eight Days a Week; Skinner in Hell" series.  
#1 - "I Don't Like Mondays"  
#2 - "Friday on My Mind"  
#3 - "Wednesday Morning, 3 AM"  
#4 - "Tuesday's Dead"  
# 5 - "Saturday Night's All Right for Fighting"  
# 6 - "Sunday Driver"

Date: 3/99  
Archiving: X/, slash x, all others, please ask.  
Web page: http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Metro/4859/JiM.html (thanks, Mona!)  
These tales will be there shortly....  
Thanks to WP.  
For Kass, who had a REALLY bad day at work and who started the whole thing.

* * *

* * *   
"Sunday Driver"  
by JiM  
* * * 

Walter Skinner hates hospitals. Always has.

He especially hates visiting Fox Mulder in hospitals. He's had a number of opportunities to determine exactly which sorts of hospital visits he particularly loathes; the visits in which Mulder is unconscious, fragile-looking and has various tubes and hoses running in and out of his body are the worst.

Like this one.

He sits beside Mulder's bed, holding his cool hand and watching the blinking lights of the respirator and heart monitor and god-knows-what-else in the gloom of the ICU.

Damn Mulder. The number of times he's been put here by retroviruses, thugs, alien hitmen, serial killers....and he's been taken down by simple pneumonia. Mulder's chest rises and falls in a regular rhythm that the conscious man never achieved. Nothing about Mulder's life is ever regular; he has a wild originality all his own that Skinner has grown to prize over the years. Mulder seems born to break molds and patterns and from the first moment, he has forced Skinner out of every established pattern and routine in his life.

Mulder had made Skinner question his orders, disobey his superiors, hide evidence, mistrust the government and finally, betray and expose a conspiracy that had threatened the entire human race. He had also seduced him one Friday night over beer and a football game, thereby breaking the pattern of Walter Skinner's post-divorce life for good. 

And god, was it good.

Sitting there, holding Mulder's flaccid hand, wondering if he will ever wake up again, Walter Skinner knows that it has been good. Ten years of good.

And damn it, he wants more.

It was just like Mulder to completely ignore a simple cold until it became a life-threatening illness. Skinner had come home from a week's business trip to find a flushed and feverish lover who had argued with him about being allowed to go for a run. At least, he had argued until he'd collapsed unconscious into Skinner's arms in mid-snarl. 

Skinner had finally gotten his way and Mulder saw the doctor -- in the ICU. Skinner had then been forced to listen to her scolding him for not bringing Mulder in sooner. As if anyone could deflect Mulder from his own blazingly erratic path -- not aliens, not a 50 year conspiracy, not the awesome bureaucracy of the DOJ -- what chance did one ex-Marine, ex-FBI, ex-lonely man have?

It is very quiet in the ICU this late at night. The staff has taken to pretending that the large silent man isn't actually here, so they won't be forced to send him away. Scully had been there earlier, watching them both with grave and gentle eyes. He knows exactly how pathetic he looks, like a lost little boy clutching at his one security.

Mulder has brought him to this. Damn him. Skinner waits to feel that lightning-strike of near-hatred that has shocked him the few times in the past when he has been forced to realize how deeply entrenched in his soul Mulder is. Those times when he finally knows how deeply Mulder's mere absence can wound him. Those times when he has finally had to confront the numb, gray, smooth places in his life and has had to choose...between the cold calm of solitude and the sparkling Hell of life with Mulder.

And he has chosen Hell every time.

But there is no lightning strike, not any more. His choices have truly been made long ago. If the price for the past ten years of light and heat and joy and noise and chaos and color has to be paid now, Skinner is ready.

But, god, he hopes not.

/You'll never be bored, Walter./ That's been Mulder's promise all along, since the first day. Skinner's dry lips curve a little as he hears that warm voice once again. He never has been bored. Enraged, appalled, enthralled, enraptured, endangered, amazed, delighted, beloved...but never bored.

He brings Mulder's still hand up to his face and rests his lips on the cool back of Mulder's strong hand. Like everything else in this damned place, Mulder smells of antiseptic and pine cleaner, but underneath there is a faint trace of his own, wilder scent and Skinner needs it more than oxygen. There is a long diagonal slash of scar tissue on the back of that hand that Skinner likes to mouth in the darkness of their bed, almost as a meditation. He has no idea how long he's been nuzzling it, just passing his lips back and forth across it, staring at those damned blinking lights, when Mulder's hand suddenly twitches in his.

Mulder's eyes fix sleepily on his face and he grunts interrogatively around the tube in his throat. Skinner smiles slowly and grunts back, wanting to shout aloud as a spark of humor lights Mulder's glassy eyes. There are no words to say, nothing that can be heard in the cool and dangerous dimness of this place. Flashes of light and noise will have to wait until they are back in the chaos of their real lives. Then Skinner will yell about idiocy and carelessness and stupidity and Mulder will yell back about rigidity and patronizing behavior and anal compulsives.

It will be good.

Until then, Skinner sits, holding Mulder's slowly warming hand against his lips, watching him slip into a healing sleep. 

Inexpressibly comforted in Hell.

<finis>

Feedback to 

 

* * *

 

Title: "Thursdays I Don't Care About You"  
Date: 4/99  
Author: JiM  
Addy:   
Note: This is #7 in the "8 Days a Week; Skinner in Hell" series, although it comes before "Sunday Driver", if we want to get all linear.  
The rest can be found at: http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Metro/4859/JiM.html (thanks Mona!)  
Archive: X/, slashX are fine, all others, please ask.

* * *

* * *   
"Thursdays I Don't Care About You"  
by JiM  
* * * 

Hell.

He'd been expecting it for a while, really, ever since his performance over the faux Mulder's body. His control had slipped badly that time and his shattering had been plain to all. He had kept his balance so long on the knife-edge that he had forgotten that it couldn't last. He had resigned himself to the whispered conversations that stop abruptly when he passes, the speculative glances, the curled lips in his wake. He hadn't been prepared for the sympathetic smiles, the hungry looks or the frank envy that are also his lot.

But this morning, it is clear that the fall has come. Another gray meeting in another gray room. This is an "informal" meeting with the other AD's. They are trying very hard not to ask him if he is sleeping with one of his agents, one of his male agents. They are nervous about that sort of thing in the J. Edgar Hoover Building. They are trying very hard not to know about this at all, but it is obvious that something must be done. 

There are caressing compliments about his Bureau career, omitting the whole episode with the prostitute, the murder charges, the times he was censured for supporting the man who is now the pearl of the FBI again. That's Mulder, an irritant whom time, circumstances and sheer endurance have rendered priceless. He smiles gently and the assembled ranks shift nervously at this unexpected reaction. Skinner is enjoying their skittishness and so he smiles again, showing his teeth.

Half of them don't want to be here at all. They don't want a scene. The rest want to drink his blood and leave his flayed carcass to dry in the sun. He wonders what he wants.

He is tired. They have won but the costs were high. There is still a rear-guard action to be fought, pockets of resistance to be overcome, conspiracy and horrors to be brought to light. Mulder is tireless in this, tracking his enemies, exposing their lies. In between the bodies and the secrets, Mulder comes home. To him. He smiles again and shifts in his seat, remembering Mulder sliding home in him.

The sun is shining outside, he can see it sharp-edging the drawn curtains. Why are they sitting in this dim gray room with the curtains drawn? He has never questioned this before. More words, more compliments, a reference to the good of the Bureau. Ah -- there it was, the veiled threat he'd been waiting for. He is vaguely disappointed, he had hoped for better from them. He forgets that others have not seen what he has seen and that pettiness is only rooted out when something larger takes its place. In spite of all that Mulder and Scully have shown them, the horrors and wonders proved beyond doubt, they are unable to see anything larger than these paperclip politics.

The voices drone on, his defenders, his enemies. He is annoyed now. The sun is shining outside and they are insisting on this sham. He counts on his fingers; so many years an agent, so many spent as ASAC, SAC, department head, AD. He is shocked by the total and taps his finger on the desk. All eyes turn toward him. He smiles pleasantly and, before he is aware of making a decision, he hears his own voice stepping off the cliff.

/I quit/.

In the choked silence, he rises and smiles again at his friends, less pleasantly at his enemies, and leaves. The shocked babble rising behind him is a rushing in his ears. He wonders how long this light-headed feeling will last. He is weightless still when he reaches his office and begins gathering the few personal items he keeps there.

Free fall. Now he sees its appeal. There is nothing more to be done, no decisions to make, nothing to carry or hold onto. He is still standing, staring out the window and smiling, when Mulder comes skidding into his office. 

Like his colleagues, Mulder is shocked when Skinner smiles at him. But unlike them, Mulder understands suddenly and smiles back, dazzling and sweet. Then he is wrapped around Skinner and they are in free fall together and it is warm and the sun is shining.

Feedback cheerfully welcomed at: 

 

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Title: "Reprise: Friday I'm in Love"  
Date: 4/99  
Author: JiM  
Addy:   
Series: XFiles, M/Sk  
Rating: PG  
Note: This is #8 in the "8 Days a Week; Skinner in Hell" series, although it comes before "Sunday Driver", if we want to get all linear. This is for Kass - she knows why.  
The rest can be found at: http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Metro/4859/JiM.html (thanks Mona!)  
Archive: X/, slashX are fine, all others, please ask.

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"Reprise: Friday I'm in Love"  
by JiM

Falling. He has been in freefall for a solid week now and Walter Skinner is surprised to find that he is still enjoying the sensation. He had always thought that this would be Hell; the loss of his career, his reputation, his purpose in life. But, no.

He wakes well before dawn every morning as he always has, but his morning routine is substantially altered. Now, he does not shower, shave, and eat a silent breakfast while glowering at the headlines. This morning, just like the past six, Walter Skinner wakes with Fox Mulder's hair coiling beneath his chin, his sleeping breath whispering across Skinner's throat, one strong arm thrown protectively across his chest. It is a new sensation, being protected, and one that he occasionally thinks he ought to hate. But he doesn't. 

He has not been back to his own home since last Thursday afternoon, when he simply walked out of the FBI, the tokens of his career in a box under his arm. Mulder took him in then, as a man takes in a stray dog. Skinner smiles as he strokes Mulder's forearm lightly. His touch is not intended to waken the sleeping man; more purposeful caresses will come later, as they have every morning this week. 

Skinner stays here, drowsing away the mornings while Mulder works. Sometimes he cleans, or reads, or simply sits and watches the dust motes dancing in the sunbeams that fill the apartment. Several times, he has met Mulder and Scully for lunch and he enjoys the startled looks he gets from former colleagues as he sits drinking a beer at noon, wearing Mulder's clothes and smiling into his eyes.

The peaceful roar of freefall is lessening, though. He feels the pull of the world beyond, faint now, but growing stronger. Decisions will have to be made. It had taken the FBI three days to finally track him down here and piles of forms, demands for meetings, signatures, explanations are beginning to pile up in a box by the door. He does not answer the phone and Mulder merely smiles and leaves it unplugged.

There is a ghost of that smile on Mulder's face this morning as he shifts and nuzzles sleepily at Skinner's shoulder. That smile fascinates Skinner; it is so new. It is not a challenging smile, nor is it mocking, frightened or knowing. It demands nothing from him. For the first time since he has known this man, Mulder is content to not know.

/When you know, you'll tell me./

Skinner presses a lingering kiss to Mulder's brow. If he ever figures it out, he suspects Mulder will know before him anyway. Soon it will be time to pick up his life again. But not this morning. Not while his lover lies beside him, that smile gently blooming as his hands curve over the elegant curves of Mulder's back.

Walter Skinner has fallen into Hell and it is more than he dreamed.

<Finis>

Feedback cheerfully appreciate at: 

 

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